Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1887-04-07
THE LAWS OF HABIT,
Their Relations TO Enthusiastically COnser.
yative Agents.

Their Relations TO Enthusiastically COnser
vafive Agents.
When we look at living creatures from ar
outward point of view one of the first things
that strike us is that they are bundles of habits
In wild animals the usual round of daily be-
havior seems necessity implanted at birth; i'll
animals domesticated, and especially in men,
1T seems to great extent to be the result OF
education. The habits to which there is an
innate tendency are called instincts; some of
those due to education would by most persons
be called acts of reason. 1t thus appears that
habit covers large part of life, and the one
engaged in studying the objective manifesto
tions of mind is bound at the very outset to de-
fine clearly just what it's limits are.
The moment one tries to define what habit
is, one is led to the fundamental properties of
matter. The laws of nature are nothing but
the immutable habits which the different ele-
mentary sorts of matter follow in their actions
and reactions upon each other. In the organic
world, however, the habits are more valuable
than this. Even instincts vary from one indi-
vidual to another of kind and are modified
In the same individual, as we shall later see
to suit the exigencies of the case. The habits
of an elementary particle of matter can not
change-on the principles OF the ato-
mistic Observation-Disclosures the particle
is itself an Interchangeable thing but those
of a compound mass of matter can change,
because they are in the last instance due to
the structure of the compound, and either out
ward forces or inward tensions can, from one
hour to another, turn that structure into some
thing different from what it was. That Is,
they can do SO if the body be plastic enough
to maintain its integrity and be not disrupted
when its structure yields. The change of
structure here spoken of need not involve the
outward shape; it may be invisible and mole
cular; when bar of iron becomes magnetic
crys talline through the action of certain
outward causes, India rubber becom es
fri able, or plaster s'sets" All these
changes are rather slow; the material in
question, opposes a certain resistance of the
modifying cause, which it takes time to over
come, but the gradual yielding whereof often
caves the material from being disintegrated
altogether. When the structure has yielded
the some inertia becomes a condition of its
comparative permanence in the new form, and
of the new habits the body then manifests.
Elasticity, then, in the wide sense of the
word, means the possession OF q structure
weak enough to yield to an influence, but
strong enough not to yield at once. Each
relatively stable phase of equill brium in such
a structure is marked by what we may call
new set of habits.
This brings us by a very natural transition
to the ethical implications of the law of habit.
They are numerous and momentous. DIR. Car
penter, from whose Mental Philosophy" we
have quoted, has SO prominently enforced the
principle that our organs grow to the way III
which they have been exercised, and dwelt
upon its consequences, that his book always
deserves to be called a work of edifcation on
this account alone We need make no
apology, then, for tracing few of these con-
sequences ourselves: ''Habit a second nature
uo1@, tn,, tha f11,1-o Of
Wellington is said to have exclaimed; and
the degree to which this is true no one
can probably appreciate well who
is a veteran soldier himself. The daily drill
and years of discipline end by fashioning
man completely over again, as to most of the
possibilities of his conduct. There is story,
which is credible enough though it may not
be true, of a practical joker who, seeing
discharged veteran carrying home his dinner,
suddenly called out, Attention = whereupon
the man instantly brought his hands down and
lost his mutton and potatoes III the gutter.
The drill had been thorough and its effects
had become embodied in the mans nervous
structure.
Riderless cavalry horses, at many battle
have been seen to come together and go
through their customary evolutons at he
sound of the bugle-call. Most trained domes-
tic animals dogs and oxen and omnibus and
car horses, seem to be machines almost pure
and simple, undoubtingly, unhestatingly
doing from minute to minute the duties they
have been taught, and giving no sign that the
possibility of analternative ever suggests itself
to their mind. Men grown old in prison have
asked to be readmitted after being once set
free. In q railroad accident to q travelling
menagerie in the United States some time in
1884 a tiger, whose cage had broken open, is
said to have emerged, but presently crept
back again, as if too much bewildered by his
hot bo with If
difficulty secured.
Habit is thus the enormous hy-wheel of So
ciety its most precious conservative agent. 1t
alone is what keeps US all within the bounds
of ordinance, and saves the children of for
tune from enviOus uprislngs of the poor. 1t
alone prevents the hardest and most repulsve
walks of life from being deserted by those
brought up TO tread therein. 1t keeps the
fisherman and decl<-band at sea through the
winter; it holds the miner III his darkness, and
nails the countryman to his log-cabin and his
lonely farm through all the months of snow; it
protects us from invasion by the natives oil
the desert and the frozen zone. 1t dooms Us
ali to fight out the battle of life upon the lines
of our nurture our early choice, and to make
the best of a pursuit that disagrees because
there is no other for which we are fitted, and
it is too late to begin again. 1t keeps differ
ent social strata from mixing. Already at the
age of % you see the professional manner
ism settling down on the young COM
mercial traveller, on the young doctor,
on the young minister on the young coun-
sellor-at-law. You see the little lines of
cleavage running through the character, the
tricks of thought, the prejudices, the ways OF
the shop" in a word, from which the man
can by-and-by no more escape than his coat
sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds.
On the whole, it is best he should not escape.
1t is well for the world that in the most of us,
by the age of thirty, the character hasset lik e
and plaster win never soften again.
BULL AGAINST BEIR.